About 30% of the world suffers from iron related diseases. Iron is a “can’t live without it or can’t live with it” element. Many human neurodegenerative diseases such as Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s, Diabetes, Tuberculosis and Thalassemia are related to iron mis-regulation.

An Assistant Professor of Biology in the Department of Life Science & the University Preparatory Program (UPP) at Alfaisal University, Dr Mateen Ahmad Khan recently published his research work on the Iron Regulatory Protein in Scientific Report, a Nature Publishing Group. In the research article, Dr. Khan discusses the importance of Iron Regulatory Protein and Element (IRE)-mRNA to Iron homeostasis in the human body. The research focus was on the post-transcriptional regulation of gene of iron transport, storage and utilization, and on the regulation of iron homeostasis. The long term goal of Dr. Khan’s work is to develop better methods for therapeutic intervention in iron related diseases.

“The University is very proud of the quality of the research output produced by its faculty members” said Dr George Kulik the Head of the Department of Life Sciences, adding “we are delighted to have someone of Mateen’s caliber in our Department”.

Details of the research article can be found on: Khan MA, et al. (2017) Sci Rep. 7(1):8532, https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/28819260. doi: 10.1038/s41598-017-09093-5. This work was supported in part by an Internal Research Grant (IRG16414) to M.A.K. from Alfaisal University, KSA.